Keyword: real estate bubble
China Is No Dubai Or Enron: Real Estate Rebalance To Buoy Gold
A man walks across a snowy overhead bridge towards business buildings in Beijing (January 6, 2010, China Daily).jpg A man walks across a snowy overhead bridge towards business buildings in Beijing (January 6, 2010, China Daily)
In China housing starts nationwide rose a staggering 194% year-over-year in November 2009. And the central bank noted new home mortgages in the first nine months of last year totaled about $139.5 billion, quadruple the amount offered a year earlier.
The China Daily noted that in terms of house prices as a proportion of incomes, China is now the most expensive place in the world. Indeed, there is a whiff of Dubai about the Chinese property market at the moment. By one estimate, the vacancy rate of Pudong, the central business district of Shanghai, is as high as 50% This is not to say there's not a real estate bubble in China. Rather, overinvestment and overbuilding is sometimes a prerequisite of an anticipated mass urban migration such as the one China is destined to experience.
China orders low-cost housing against property bubble
Raining hot prices in real estate market
China's city governments and ministries have been told to build more low cost housing. They have also been ordered to push property developers to complete projects more quickly in order to help ease property prices.
The directive has come from the country's cabinet, the State Council, amid fears of a property bubble. It also says it wants to prevent speculative foreign investment pushing up prices even further.
China's leaders are worried that house prices in many cities here are rising too fast now.